{"id":996,"date":"2018-04-22T03:44:21","date_gmt":"2018-04-22T10:44:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/?p=996"},"modified":"2019-03-01T21:31:25","modified_gmt":"2019-03-02T05:31:25","slug":"tavira","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/tavira\/","title":{"rendered":"Tavira"},"content":{"rendered":"

Where is everyone???<\/span><\/em><\/h2>\n

Well this is interesting.\u00a0 After complaining about all the tourists, we seem to now be unable to find any? \u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

We\u2019ve been here for 2-1\/2 days and the weather\u00a0 has been really nice.\u00a0 Sunny and 26 degrees.\u00a0 We arrived in Tavira after about 6 hours travel from Jerez via Seville by train and bus.\u00a0 A bit long but it was broken up with having to go back to Seville to catch a bus as there are no trains into Portugal from southern Spain.\u00a0 There are trains from each side going to the border, but the tracks don\u2019t meet up.\u00a0 At least this is what we are told.\u00a0 I do know you can go by train from Lisbon to Madrid so it\u2019s not a completely screwed system.<\/span><\/p>\n

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View from our balcony<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Tavira is very pretty.\u00a0 We are staying about 2 km outside of the town center in a condominium complex, top floor unit with an unobstructed view of the Atlantic Ocean.\u00a0 It\u2019s absolutely gorgeous! \u00a0<\/span>We have to walk a bit to get groceries and town center is a 30-minute hike but it is nice and quiet here.\u00a0 And great for relaxation after the busy city centers.\u00a0 But . . . it\u2019s almost too quiet.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

There are lots of condo complexes dotting the waterfront of which we are a part.\u00a0 Maybe it\u2019s just the one we are in or maybe it\u2019s the quiet months before everyone descends onto the Algarve.\u00a0 Not sure, but it\u2019s like a ghost town here. \u00a0 A lot of the condos are vacant. Parts of it look like sets for the Walking Dead. \u00a0It\u2019s very weird especially after the busy cities we have been in, but there are very few people walking about here and I suspect it\u2019s probably the nature of this area.\u00a0\u00a0The town itself is busy with lots of beach goers and most likely ex-pats living here, the Algarve being the seaside vacation wonderland of Europe, but where we are staying . . . nada, zip, snoozeville.<\/span><\/p>\n

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View from the back of our condo – most of the units in the complex are empty.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Abandoned construction on a nearby condo complex<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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So, Tavira is not at all what we expected.\u00a0 We thought it might be a quaint little fishing village with some resort stuff around and some nice beaches.\u00a0 And it is sort of like that, but sort of not.\u00a0 The quaint fishing village is just a small town with shops and cafes catering to the tourists and ex-pats. There is local flavor here as well and Tavira also has Roman and Moorish relics to boast about. \u00a0Outside of town are condo complexes, some golf courses, some resort compounds along the water and a major road\/highway connecting it all.\u00a0 The road that runs through Tavira is the main highway for the entire Algarve, so it is very busy and there are no alternative routes which allow you to bypass it. <\/span><\/p>\n

The central Algarve is where all the mega resorts are, the western part is rugged and sparse, and here in the east, it\u2019s relaxed and quiet. \u00a0That\u2019s not to say there is nothing interesting here, it\u2019s just we haven\u2019t been able to get to any of it.\u00a0 It’s hard to walk to anywhere other than around the town center unless you want to walk along the highway, which doesn’t have any sidewalks.\u00a0 You need a car. <\/span><\/p>\n

Southern Portugal is spectacular, with pretty beaches and varied geography,\u00a0 especially in the eastern Algarve, where we are, bordering on the Baixo Guadiana district.\u00a0 This area is also where the southerly route of the El Camino starts or ends depending on your perspective.\u00a0<\/span>The photos we post unfortunately, are only going to be local and will not show how beautiful this whole area is.\u00a0 Here in quiet Tavira, a lot of places are empty and\/or in a state of disrepair.\u00a0 \u00a0While there appears to be many Europeans and Brits living here, we don\u2019t really encounter them except when we are in town shopping. They are all in their cars. \u00a0I suspect the busier times are more the summer months when it is high season and all of Portugal, the rest of the Brits, the Scandinavians and Germans come down to vacation.\u00a0 The disrepair part is more telling I think.\u00a0 There seems to be more than a few building projects that are unfinished and a number complexes that need cleaning and a fresh coat of paint. <\/span><\/p>\n

We walked to one of the seaside resorts the other day (about an hour hike) and there was supposed to be a pedestrian\/biking bridge across the river to get there.\u00a0 The only other access is a longer walk down the highway.\u00a0 The bridge is there but it\u2019s listing at a 30-degree angle, boarded up, and has warning signs on to keep people off.\u00a0 We ignored it obviously, as there was no way we were hiking all the way back and around.\u00a0 We were told by other bad \u2018ignore-warning-sign\u2019 people that it has been like this for over a year now.\u00a0 So, maybe the area is struggling for money?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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So, why didn\u2019t we rent a car?\u00a0 Good question.\u00a0 Unlike crazy-ville city centers where a car is IMO a waste of time, here in the Algarve with a decent highway stretching across it, a car would have been a perfect way to see most things here.\u00a0 For starters, we probably needed to rent in Faro which is not that far down the road, but we stopped in Tavira first.\u00a0 We also needed some down time. \u00a0And chilling out on the balcony, in the sun for the first couple of days, with a glass of wine, has been very nice.\u00a0 I think to really explore this area, \u00a0one would need at least 2 weeks, and we only have one.\u00a0 There is a lot to see.\u00a0 There were a couple of days of thunderstorms and showers and we weren\u2019t that motivated to get out.\u00a0 Mostly though, our focus was getting around Spain and Portugal relatively cheaply without the hassle of driving, insurance, gas, tolls, and other expenses, and while that has been a good decision, we probably should have researched and planned the Algarve better. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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We\u2019d come back here definitely and for longer, but it will be planned differently.\u00a0 So, if you are thinking of wintering somewhere, this place seems like a no-brainer.\u00a0 Get a car though.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Where is everyone??? Well this is interesting.\u00a0 After complaining about all the tourists, we seem to now be unable to find any? \u00a0 We\u2019ve been here for 2-1\/2 days and the weather\u00a0 has been really nice.\u00a0 Sunny and 26 degrees.\u00a0 We arrived in Tavira after about 6 hours travel from Jerez via Seville by train and bus.\u00a0 A bit long but it was broken up with having to go back to Seville to catch a bus as there are no trains into Portugal from southern Spain.\u00a0 There are trains from each side going to the border, but the tracks don\u2019t meet up.\u00a0 At least this is what we are told.\u00a0…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1027,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/996"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=996"}],"version-history":[{"count":46,"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/996\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4286,"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/996\/revisions\/4286"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}